Naruto: A New Friendsip
by Falcon Crimson
Summary: After Sasuke's betrayal and before Naruto's training with Pervy Sage, lies a new friendship.  But the unknown connections with this new arrival will reveal an enemy of his past, present, and future. Contains OC.


Prologue

I shifted through the dusty volumes in search of what I hoped would be there. It had been days since my last interesting 'discovery', and I was beginning to lose hope that I would find another in this place.

'Maybe I should move on to another location.' I thought. But, no. I knew there was something interesting here, I just felt it. It had always been like this. The newer places that people always said were great never registered to me as actually being worth it. But places like this, were the dust is the proof of no hand touching the precious archives in years, this is where I always felt it. The feeling that something unique for me was waiting in the shelves. And that feeling still hadn't dissipated since I first saw this store.

I stopped suddenly, both in thought and motion, and held my hand over one in particular book spine. I closed my eyes and waited for that familiar sensation. It was there alright, the one book in the entire store that I had been searching for. I opened my eyes and smiled a look of excitement.

Here was what I had spent the past two weeks looking for. Now what was it about? I opened the book to find characters in an what would be a normally unfamiliar text and sighed a sigh of relief. It was only Japanese. I was fearing it was going to be some remote language again, like Akkadian.

I took the book and walked across the room to a table and sat down. I let myself bask in the anticipation of learning something unknown. Then I slowly opened the book, noting that even though this book was ancient it's creaking spine told me that it hadn't been opened once. Curious. I quickly dismissed this though when my gaze drifted to the book's lettering and fell into a trance as I read.

Apparently this book was some form of instruction manual. But the things it talked about were steeped in terms and phrases like some martial art or Asiatic religious book. An ancient version of Tai Chi for Dummies perhaps?

I stopped reading in the middle of the book. This part was really strange. It looked like the writer had placed an entire circle around the two pages, having it connect where the two pages met. What was stranger was the fact that the instruction around the circle seemed to demand some form 'blood signature' in order to complete it. I was starting to get afraid now. One of my rules was to never get involved in things of the occult. And here it was, a book, demanding sacrifice!

I started to put the book up now that I was thoroughly spooked when my index finger caught hold of a hidden point at the bottom of the book's spine. I lifted my finger to my face in pain not noticing that a small droplet of my blood had fallen onto the circle. I didn't notice when the blood began to swirl in an unfamiliar yet hypnotic pattern. But I did notice when the circle began to glow bright blue. And I definitely noticed when it felt like my body was being squeezed through a particularly small cheese grater. In fact, that was the last thing I noticed before I closed my eyes to a brilliant blue light and passed out.

Chapter 1: Another Rescue

It was tough on her first day. Harder on her second day. And then terrifying on her third day. But after a month of being Hokage it wasn't getting any worse. Wasn't getting any better either, but that's what she signed up for.

She sighed as she went through her second stack of papers for the day. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. The civilian council had enacted a series of emergency repairs throughout the city.

But it wasn't repair orders that she was signing. It was papers about Leaf ninja missions that needed to be assigned. To pay for the massive bills the village was piling up they had to take on basically every mission that came their way. Which they didn't have the manpower for. During the attack on the hidden village they lost entire squads of ninja. And those that hadn't been completely obliterated were incomplete due to their teammate's deaths or injuries. The only ones that were still intact were the ones that had been watching the chunin exams. Which meant mostly just rookies.

She really needed a drink right about now. She reached towards a drawer in her desk, stopping her hand at the hiding place of her sake. She sensed a presence nearby, one that hadn't been there before. "I suppose since you got past the Anbu guards in front of the door you must be very stealthy, but why did you do something so monumentally stupid?" she said as she looked up at the unannounced guest. The intruder was dressed completely in dark blue, a hood covering his face and a pair of goggles covering his eyes. The only thing that was unique was his headband. It was an unknown village symbol, a sun and moon in between a lightning bolt.

_Interesting_. The intruder bowed his head to show his apologies before responding. "Lady Tsunade, I am a messenger from the Village Hidden in the Skies. I have been told to ask for your assistance.". _Very Interesting_.

Naruto was, as usual, at his second home, known as Ichiraku Ramen. Normally he'd be on his fifth bowl by now. But he wasn't even at his third bowl. He just stared down at his now long cold ramen and sighed occasionally. The thought that Sasuke had betrayed the entire village and went to that snake ninja was bad, but that he had tried to kill him made it almost too much to bear. He sighed again and hoped that he'd be able to fulfill his promise to Sakura one day.

Before he could fall deeper into his depression his sensei arrived. His back was turned, but it was easy to tell it was him. The gust of wind and the drifting leaves within it's airborne current was an easy clue, the fact that he only heard the low rustle of a page being turned meant it could only be the Copy Ninja with his infamous echi-echi book. Naruto didn't turn around to say hello, nor did he say anything when Kakashi took the seat next to him. He just continued to stare into the miso ramen with a look of

self-lamentation.

Kakashi glanced at the hyper-active knucklehead to see a face of sorrow. He also glanced at the father and daughter who owned and worked the ramen stand to see similar expressions plastered on their faces as well. It seemed that the blond was able to affect people's moods around him negatively as much as he was able to positively. _Sigh, _he moaned, even though it was muffled behind his mask. It was to be expected that Sasuke's betrayal would have this affect on everyone he knew, but for Naruto it was especially devastating; his life threatening wounds had taken less time to heal than it was for him to get out of this funk.

"Perhaps this will cheer you up." Naruto's sensei said without preamble, causing to blond to look up with the same curious gaze he used to have. "Lady Tsunade has requested you, I, and Sakura to meet her at Hokage Tower, her office to be specific, to discuss a new mission. She wouldn't give me any details of it or even the rank of the mission. She just said to get on with rounding you genin up." After the short debriefing he saw that Naruto had the same look on his face. Which meant he either didn't understand or was too stunned to do anything else. Kakashi was going to have to add some incentive to this then. "Oh, and she also said that if, and I quote, 'That little brat with my necklace isn't in front of my desk in five minutes, I'll do to him what I promised I'd do the last time he tried to prank me'. That was about…" _pause for dramatic effect_ "around three minutes ago." he finished with a smile. The last time he had seen Naruto run as fast as he did in his scramble to Hokage Tower was that time he had given Team 7 that one training exercise that included his ninja dogs and the command "Get em". He was definitely going to find out the insinuated threat that Tsunade had used. It sounded like a good laugh.

Silence almost echoed across the room, but the tension was thick enough to cut with a butter knife. Tsunade stared, almost glared at Team 7 minus one, and if one had not known any better they could have sworn it was meant to scare them instead of letting them know the severity of the mission. Tsunade had certainly grown into her new duty well. Sakura and Naruto's intent focus could attest to that. Even Kakashi had a look of rare anticipation. Tsunade looked down and drew a breathe before looking up again. It was time for her to disclose the mission info.

"A Hidden Village representative visited me this morning to ask us for our assistance in a matter of great importance to their village." she said "They wish for us to help them retrieve a member of their council's family, who has been reported to be seen inside Land of Fire's borders. They themselves don't have the manpower or the knowledge of the area to conduct this mission with their forces, so they asked a group of our ninja to retrieve and return the person to them." she stopped herself to see if they would have any questions, objections, or anything needed to be said before they started packing for their mission. Sakura was the first to do so.

"But Tsunade-sama, what about the condition of the village? We can't leave now!" She exclaimed in a voice filled with confusion. Her expression was also on the faces of the rest of the team as well. "That may be true, but as of now Konoha has very limited resources in terms of budget. Therefore we've been taking as many missions as possible in order to avoid being sunk into debt. Which means your team doesn't really have any say in the matter.". "Hhm. Why not send a more experienced team Tsunade-sama?" after Kakashi said this Naruto's face started turning red and was abut to start yelling about how they had more than enough experience when kasha interrupted his soon to be rant, "I mean this could eventually turn into a several month long mission if we have to search for one person in the entire country, regardless if were better suited for it than their ninja." The words in his lazy drawl made sense to his students. "Because the Hidden Sky Village was fortunate enough to be able to get knowledge of the area he is most likely in. And since it has only a few towns with little traffic to the more populated areas there is very little reason he would not still be there." Naruto's face scrunched up in thought as he reviewed the mission aloud. "SO, basically were just traveling to this place, look around the towns and the forests, and find this guy, right?". " That's right Naruto." Tsunade answered with a small smirk. "Ha! This will be over in week! Believe It!" "Naruto! This isn't the time to be overly optimistic!" _'Though the idiot's right! This is will be a piece of cake, SHANNARO!' _"Quiet down you two, the more calm we are about this the quicker we can get it over with."


End file.
